Though his skin is naturally pale, he prefers to sport a flush of color - especially when on holiday with family in Sicily. Because he tends to redden and burn when he's in the sun, he turns to a tanning bed four times a year.

"It's a lot easier to pick up ladies with a tan," the Oakland teen said.

But the sun-kissed glow coveted by many Californians just got a little harder for teens to achieve. Under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday that is now the nation's most restrictive, boys and girls under 18 are banned from using tanning beds as of Jan. 1.

Current law allows minors who are at least 14 to use an ultraviolet tanning device with written permission from their parents.

But state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, the bill's sponsor, said the higher age limit is necessary because the type of radiation used in tanning beds can lead to skin damage and melanoma, a potentially fatal form of skin cancer.

"Skin damage is cumulative, so the more exposure one gets younger in life, the worse the harmful effects will be," Lieu said.

Texas has banned children under 16 from using tanning beds, and other states have age restrictions. But California has become the first state to completely bar all minors from the practice.

Melanoma is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women age 25 to 30, according to the California Academy of Family Physicians, one of several health groups that backed the bill.

The warnings don't alarm Tomas, who was shopping with friends at American Eagle Outfitters in downtown San Francisco on Sunday.

"I don't think it's that bad," he said.

His friend, 16-year-old Elise Filter of Berkeley, said she sympathized with Tomas but had never occupied a tanning bed. Instead, this summer, she got her skin sprayed at a salon - "a natural glow," she said - out of curiosity.

"I just think it looks a lot healthier to have color on my skin," Elise said.

The danger of tanning beds has been overstated and the new age limit will needlessly hurt business owners, said the Indoor Tanning Association, an industry group that said up to 10 percent of its members' customers are under 18.

Several Bay Area tanning salons contacted Sunday said few of their clients are minors. But Svetlana Serbul, owner of Walnut Creek Tanning, said teenage girls made up 10 to 15 percent of her clientele.

"They're wearing short skirts; they want their legs to be a nice color," she said. "Most of them, they come before occasions like Halloween or prom. Prom season is very big for teenagers to come to tan because they want to look good in their prom dresses."

Serbul says she was already upset about a 10 percent tax on tanning-bed services, a fee President Barack Obama imposed to raise money as part of the federal health care overhaul - leading to a public rebuke from heavily baked "Jersey Shore" star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi.

Elise doesn't think tanning is 100 percent safe - but neither, she said, is sitting in the sun.